


Quatre saisons en enfer

by ide_cyan



Category: Murder by Numbers (2002)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Explicit Sexual Content, Fusion, Hellraiser - Freeform, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, Slash, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ide_cyan/pseuds/ide_cyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beyond good and evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quatre saisons en enfer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fetherstonhaugh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fetherstonhaugh/gifts).



Justin kept his head down in the cafeteria, examining his seat, which branched out on a metal pole between his legs from the pedestal base bolted to the floor. Four seats to a table, all truncated squares, themselves aligned in rows of identical iterations in a long noisesome rectangular hall. The spork in his hand dug into the geometrical compartments of his lunch tray, and he brought the food to his mouth where his mastication transformed it into a bolus. 

The room hummed like a colony of bees.

After lunch he had class. After class, he'd try to spend time in the yard, alone, with a book.

There was an old man mumbling to himself in the library. Justin saw short grey hairs on the back of a balding black skull above a blue collar, and long agile fingers rummaging from book to book, picking scraps of paper from bulging pockets and slipping them in-between the pages. 

Justin passed him by to locate the poetry section.

"My brain is the key that sets me free..."

Justin looked back in recognition of the quotation and saw the old man leafing slowly through a thick volume. He placed another piece of paper inside, put the book down, and continued to browse. Justin watched him select books, find a particular spot inside them, and mark each of them with paper scraps.

Justin picked up the volume that the old man had put down on a cart and found the marker inside, a torn piece of wrapping paper stuck between pages 728 and 729.

"Mr. Weiss, what are you up to?" asked a voice. A librarian. He was also black, but much younger-looking, wearing a suit without a tie. He spoke softly, but he had startled Justin. "You know you're not supposed to leave things in the books."

The librarian reached out gently and halted Mr. Weiss as he began to repeat the procedure. Mr. Weiss shrugged the touch away. Strips of paper spilled onto the floor, gold and brown patterns all jumbled together. He hunched down to gather up his papers, and a metallic reflection flashed off of a slim object tucked into the back of his pants.

"You made me lose my place!" exclaimed Mr. Weiss. "I'm going to have to start over."

"Mr. Weiss, are we going to have a situation here?"

Justin put the old man's note back inside the book where his finger had held it open. He placed the book back on the cart where he'd found it and backed away.

He would go in the yard today and try to find flowers to look at instead.

 

* * *

 

Justin liked to sleep on his right side. Since his right arm had taken a bullet, that had become more difficult, and his sleep had suffered. He stared at the low ceiling over him. In the dark, three things chiefly occupied his mind, emerging from his memories to tear at him.

He turned onto his left side, bent his arm around his head, and stroked his own hair.

 

* * *

 

Justin had purchased a prepaid card at the canteen with the funds his father had transferred to him on his first day. He dialed a number from memory on the ancient wall-mounted telephone.

"Lisa, it's me."

"This is Lisa's mother. You're the Pendleton boy, aren't you?"

"May I speak to Lisa?"

"Lisa's not at home, and --"

"Mom, who is it?" Justin heard her voice distantly at the other end of the line.

"It's a telemarketer. She's trying to sell me quake insurance. I told you not to call here anymore. I'm going to have this number changed. Don't call us again. Thank you."

The line disconnected.

 

* * *

 

"How are you getting along? You're still going to class?" Justin nodded in answer. "Have you given any thought to what you're going to do once you finish your GED?" 

"I'll go to Harvard, or Princeton. I'm not sure yet."

"That's not just a joke, you know. Some prestigious colleges offer correspondence courses. You could enroll in the best of them."

"And maybe I'll get to graduate from all of them by the time I leave."

"Justin, you can still do something with your life. It doesn't end here, in this institution."

The counselor had decorated her walls with encouraging photographs of smiling graduates and thank-you notes from parolees. A pin held a gold gift bow to a corkboard and a long red ribbon dangled from it.

"You told me you had a greenhouse at home. The Vocational program offers classes in landscaping. Horticulture, even."

He puzzled over the banality of repeating the famous Dorothy Parker joke, but he held his tongue before he could liken himself to a whore inadvertently.

 

* * *

 

Justin had been naked in communal showers before. His dignity had demanded he regain his cleanliness after sports, and his curiosity had kept his eyes open to the bashful nakedness of other boys. He had read, and composed, erotica about locker-room encounters, and his computer at home had connected him to the moderated Usenet haunts that enriched his lexicon of explicit terminology and theoretical savoir-faire.

Exposing his own nakedness to the eyes of others alternated now between humiliating, bearable formality and guarded hyperawareness. Steeling himself against the narratives that once excited his imagination, he had lost much of the intellectual frisson and experienced adrenaline-induced tremors of built-up anxiety more often.

The nakedness of other men aroused him far less outside the possibility of his control. 

His single-occupancy cell had put the lie to his fear of living out the opening episode of OZ, but the progressive crowding of the living facilities kept it at the back of his mind. He avoided the unwanted come-ons during the day. He stayed civil, rather than friendly.

He heard moans beyond his walls in the night when his own heart ached.

When he took himself in hand, he clenched his teeth lest he give himself away, and remembered.

 

* * *

 

Richard's cum tasted salty and somewhat disagreeable when Justin felt it spilling on the back of his tongue. He had, previously, cultivated a taste for caviar, though caviar was never served so warm, nor on such a mouthful. He chose to swallow.

He pulled his lips slowly from around the soft skin of Richard's shaft, admiring its wet blush in the candlelight. 

"You're a world-class cocksucker," Richard said hoarsely. His head was still thrown back, so Justin addressed his Adam's apple.

"You're speaking from experience?"

"Girls do not show that kind of dedication to detail." Richard patted his hair, smoothing down the fistfuls he'd disarranged in the minutes before.

Justin had forgotten to use a condom. When Richard's leather pants had slipped down from his hips, he had been too eager to experiment, to show Richard what he could do for him, to use protection. He'd wanted to share everything with Richard, but STDs now occurred to him as an acceptable exception. He frowned.

"Come here," said Richard, pulling him up. He sat Justin next to him on the woolen blanket and undid his fly. Justin's erection hardened in Richard's hand as Richard freed it from Justin's briefs, and Richard unhesitatingly began to stroke it, dry in his grasp, rubbing and squeezing athletically, chafing and pleasuring in the same motion. With his free arm, he brought Justin's head close to his, to rest on his shoulder, as Justin's body began to buck in reaction to the handjob. Justin came altogether too quickly, whimpering a little and hating his weakness. He kissed Richard's neck.

They sat side by side, cocks still out, detumescing in the afterglow. Richard wiped his hand on the checkered flannel rumpled behind them, before reaching down for his clothing. Justin tucked himself back into his underwear, momentarily glimpsing Richard's bared buttocks as Richard stood to reclothe himself.

Richard took out a cigarette and walked a few steps ahead to the stone fireplace, and looked under his shoe.

"You've left some DNA on the floor over there," he said. "Gotta be more careful."

 

* * *

 

Justin missed seeing the kaleidoscopes of monarchs wintering in eucalyptus trees.

He received a box of biscuits from Detective Mayweather for Christmas, with the note:

Thank you for saving my life.

It had been opened for inspection and wrapped up again. He kept the colorful red and green wrapping paper to fold it into origami butterflies.

He found the instructions in a library book, which had been marked open to show how to create simple giftboxes as part of the display of holiday decorations.

 

* * *

 

Justin looked for Mr. Weiss in the dining hall. Many black men with greying hair and balding heads, clad in the same CDCR blues as himself, ate from their geometrical trays at their geometrical tree-shaped tables, their plastic utensils and plastic pitchers of soft drinks and cartons of milk and drinking mugs blending into the background noise.

He doubted his own ability to recognize him now. Perhaps he ate in one of the other unit cafeterias. Perhaps he'd been released. If Mr. Weiss had escaped, everyone would have heard.

The windows ran in a strip along the low ceiling, interspersed by security mirrors. 

The arid yard beyond them comprised square enclosures between the buildings, traced by walkways, concatenated by high wire fences. Hills and a few palm trees rose beyond still.

 

* * *

 

Justin walked to the showers in his flip-flops, made his bed daily, visited the medical facility for check-ups on his arm, and graduated from high school.

His horizons stayed the same.

 

* * *

 

He tried calling Lisa's home again and learned the number had gone out of service. Her current telephone information was now unlisted.

He wrote to her, but his letters were largely returned to him, and his mail was subject to inspection. She had written him prior to his conviction, when she still had doubts.

In mid-April an inmate assistance program delivered to him a hand-drawn portrait of Olivia Lake, modelled after the photos that had appeared in the press, standing unsmiling surrounded by wilted orchids.

 

* * *

 

Low clouds in the summer rolled up the valley from the bay that Richard's bedroom had overlooked.

Mornings where the fog filled the yard and hid the fences meant lockdowns. Justin put a large-format hardcover book, Phạm Shaw's Guide to Dentistry, in a folded-up towel over the bare metal of his toilet, and sat there below the open hopper window, reading another volume by the diffuse light that came in through the fog and the iron bars behind the glass.

>   _Guilt._ — Although the shrewdest judges of the witches and even the witches themselves were convinced of the guilt of witchery, this guilt nevertheless did not exist. This applies to all guilt.

A piece of paper fell out of the book when he turned to page 216. Brown and gold, metallic ink glittering in the natural light.

 

* * *

 

Justin returned to the library at the first opportunity after the lockdown ended and began searching the books.

He moved casually, but his heart rate was elevated, and he felt a ringing in his ears when he saw the first scrap of paper poking out of a dusty children's book. It opened between pages 8 and 9.

He put the scrap of paper in his pocket.

He looked through so many books. It had been months, after all, and the librarian must have removed those that had been easy to find near Mr. Weiss when he had stopped him, and many of the books must have been perused or borrowed since. How many would be left?

Justin's arm hurt when lifting a particularly heavy volume. He sat on the floor and leafed through it slowly. On turning to page 1331, he found another of Mr. Weiss's markers.

The pattern, though it could have been disrupted by someone misplacing the marker, still held true to his theory. He had four points of data. He needed more.

"Are you looking for these?" The librarian startled him again.

Justin craned his neck to look at him. The librarian was holding another strip of paper.

"Yes."

"Left a regular series of breadcrumbs, that Mr. Weiss. I find a few more every time I think I've cleaned them all up."

"You keep them?"

"I threw them away, but, now that he's no longer here to replace them, I keep one as a souvenir."

Justin got to his feet. The librarian held his hand out for the book. Justin gave it to him, and the librarian shelved it in its proper place.

"Why are _you_ looking for them?"

"I was curious. I wondered what the pattern on the paper was."

"Oh, that I can show you. Follow me." The librarian led Justin to a locked filing cabinet. He took keys from his belt and unlocked one of the doors. Decorating supplies filled the pull-out drawer.

"What happened to Mr. Weiss?"

"His sentence was up." The librarian pulled out rolls of wrapping paper and laid them out on the nearest table, before locking up the cabinet again. "Poor guy. His head wasn't all there these last few years. I don't know if he even realizes he's out. I think he was moved to a care facility."

"Poor guy," Justin agreed. Mr. Weiss was out. Mr. Weiss was crazy. Did one matter more than the other?

"So, what's your pleasure?" the librarian asked Justin.

There were patterns for several occasions: Christmas, birthdays, Valentine's Day... one roll of brown and gold paper showed the same pattern as the scraps Justin had found. There was scarcely enough of it left to go around the cardboard tube.

"That's the one."

"Got any presents to wrap?"

"I'd like to send something to my girlfriend."

"Take it; it's yours." The librarian removed the leftover paper from the cardboard tube and gave it to Justin, who rolled it up in a scroll lengthwise and put it in his pocket.

The librarian unlocked the cabinet again to return the rest of the wrapping paper to storage.

 

* * *

 

Its lines and curves disclosed no design that he could recognize.

Justin studied the paper scroll by the moonlight that came in through the window. Lights out for the night gave him no other illumination, but he was alone, and unlikely to be interrupted. And he could just make out the patterns because of the reflective index of the metallic ink.

He turned the length of wrapping paper in his hands this way and that, to examine it at different angles. Paper cut. He sucked on his finger.

The mathematics of Mr. Weiss's code suggested an idea, but the paper's shape was incorrect to carry out the purpose. He folded an end of it at a 45 degree angle, and then folded the paper again along the side of the right angle that met the rest of the length of paper, and carefully tore it along that line.

It ripped. 

He turned the paper around. Repeated his steps on the length that remained, and tore more carefully, as another rip would leave him even less usable material. 

He had looked up the instructions but had no way of consulting them again in the dark. He folded meticulously, from memory, correcting his mistake when he used the bird base at first. There was too little paper to fold a thousand paper cranes.

He had the right shape now. The method was simple enough to remember. All he had to do was repeat the same folds four times. Tuck the little corners in. 

And blow.

The water bomb blew up in his hands. He pinched the edges to give it shape. It became a cube.

A box.

The sound of a bell broke in, and chains rattling outside suddenly. The guards in the corridor? An alarm going off in the unit?

Justin's bed rattled. Light surged from the cracks in the concrete floor, momentarily blinding him. The dark grid of bars at his window flashed to a color negative, and thick fog poured in from the corners of the walls, which began to recede, impossibly expanding the cell beyond its natural dimensions.

The smell of gore carried on a gust of wind assaulted him. The clink of chains grew louder.

From the gaps between the walls something stepped into the room with him. Its head was an animate partially-exploded Beauchêne skull contained in distended flesh, the human features distorted, the lower lip still smiling. It wore the hide of its flayed torso inside-out, a blood-red leather jacket. The remaining, cadaver-pale skin about the neck bore signs of repeated punctures inflicted after it had lost circulation, and its body below the waist was encased in polyvinylidene chloride.

"Come here," it said, and raised its hand beckoningly. Justin recognized the ring on his thumb.

He went willingly into the embrace, to feel Richard's fingers digging into the nape of his neck once more.

**Author's Note:**

> The quotation that Justin recognises in the library is Houdini's mantra. The quoted excerpt, on guilt, is from Nietzsche's _The Gay Science_. The title is French for "four seasons in hell", and is an allusion to Rimbaud.
> 
> Details of the setting were inspired by researching a prison in California, but this story is not meant to represent an actual place.
> 
> I didn't name it in the tags it to avoid giving away the nature of the fusion fandom to the story's recipient too quickly, but the fusion fandom is [Hellraiser](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Hellraiser%20\(Movies\)). Borrowed a couple of its more famous lines, but I loosely reinvented a Lament Configuration and a Cenobite to suit this story.
> 
> Thanks to [Marguerite M](http://archiveofourown.org/users/margueritem/profile) for betaing this fic when it was still only half-written. All uncaught typos and errors are due to my subsequent edits.


End file.
